Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Familiar. Far too familiar.

This scene really did feel like something straight out of Tokyo Ghoul.

“Someone’s dead. Was it a curse user… or a cursed spirit?”

Blood was splashed across the walls and the floor in thick, ugly streaks.

And beside the corpse stood a dark silhouette.

To be honest, it was too dark.

What was wrong with the lighting here? He could barely make anything out.

Ragnar Kagenou had no choice but to activate the Gate of Babylon.

Golden ripples spread open behind him.

In an instant, the surroundings were swallowed by a radiant golden glow.

He… no, it would be more accurate.

Its eyes were blood-red, and its skin was pale in a way that felt closer to death than life.

Faced with the sudden light, it instinctively raised an arm to shield its eyes.

Ragnar Kagenou frowned slightly.

“…Is this supposed to be a vampire?”

Gojo Satoru observed it for a moment before replying, “No. It’s just a different kind of cursed spirit.”

“In other words, some kind of ghoul-type curse?”

A lower existence resembling a vampire.

Maybe something born from humanity’s fear of vampires.

“Close enough.”

It was strange. A cursed spirit like this had actually managed to imitate a human form.

Ragnar’s gaze turned cold.

“What an ugly thing. Die.”

Whoosh!

A Noble Phantasm shot forward.

The ghoul-like cursed spirit was split in two on the spot.

“Arghhhhh!”

…And it still wasn’t dead?

Reduced to nothing but its upper body, the ghoul bared its fangs and dragged itself toward Gojo Satoru.

Gojo glanced at it lazily.

“Looks like this one needs to be erased completely.”

Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.

Boom!

A small crater burst open across the ground, and the ghoul’s body vanished without a trace.

Ragnar exhaled softly.

“I thought this was just supposed to be a routine mission to seal a cursed tool. Shoko really was thinking ahead.”

Gojo waved a hand dismissively.

“Quit whining.”

Ragnar lightly fanned the air in front of him. The stench here was only getting worse.

Even if it wore a human shape, in the end, it was still nothing more than a beast.

Its vitality was disgustingly persistent.

When they returned to the hotel, Ragnar looked out at the dim street beyond.

“A blood moon. Vampire-type curses. A curse user. The Inverted Spear of Heaven…”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“This is getting interesting.”

Ragnar had to admit, Jujutsu Kaisen never really showed much about curses overseas.

But now that he was seeing it for himself, the variety here was undeniably intriguing.

The next day—

“Where are we heading today?”

Gojo glanced ahead.

“Probably… over there.”

Ragnar Kagenou and Gojo Satoru arrived at a certain district of the city.

The slums.

It was the same in every city, wasn’t it?

A glittering metropolis on one side, and on the other, a place everyone preferred not to look at.

The moment they stepped inside, one impression struck immediately.

Chaos.

Not mere disorder, but a suffocating kind of chaos.

Vagrants slept openly in the streets. Shacks pieced together from warped planks and scrap wood lined the road in unstable rows.

And this was only the outer edge.

Ragnar had no desire to imagine what the deeper parts looked like.

Standing at the boundary, he could already smell rot in the air.

“…Seriously? What exactly are we supposed to do in a place like this?”

People lay sprawled over piles of trash, while others staggered through the streets in a daze, looking half-dead and drugged out of their minds.

Gojo answered helplessly, “Can’t be helped. This is where Jujutsu High’s information trail ends.”

“The slums…” Ragnar recalled something and narrowed his eyes. “That waiter did say a lot of foreigners died around here.”

Could they all have been jujutsu sorcerers and curse users who came investigating?

Ragnar fell silent for a moment.

Could there really be something here?

After all, both Jujutsu High’s records and the waiter’s testimony pointed to this place.

Just as the two of them were about to step in, a powerful chemical stench hit them head-on.

At the same time, countless watchful eyes turned toward them from the shadows.

Ragnar’s gaze sharpened.

“We got marked the moment we arrived.”

Gojo looked around once, then said, “They’re ordinary people. No sign of cursed energy from cursed spirits yet.”

“I see.”

At that moment, one man stepped out from the crowd.

He looked different from the others.

Both his hands had been severed. His clothes were filthy and disordered, and his eyes were unnaturally red.

He approached them in a shambling, crooked way.

“Jujutsu sorcerers… how long has it been since I last saw your kind?”

His voice sounded like rusted metal scraping against torn cloth.

“So long. Far too long.”

Gojo’s expression cooled.

“A curse user, huh? Move. Or deal with the consequences.”

He bent slightly, lowered his sunglasses, and looked at the man with those clear blue eyes.

“Looks like we’re not getting through without force.”

“Heehee… hahahaha!”

The man suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.

Ragnar, standing beside Gojo, looked thoroughly unimpressed.

“Gojo. Hurry up and kill him.”

Gojo raised a hand toward the deranged curse user.

Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue.

Instantly, the man’s upper body was torn apart.

“…Hm?”

But instead of dying—

“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts so much!”

The flesh shredded by the force of attraction dissolved into a red mist… and slowly began to regenerate.

“I said it hurts so much!!!”

Ghastly white bone suddenly extended from the severed ends of his arms.

Ragnar’s eyes narrowed.

“A vampire.”

He could see it now.

The ability to turn into blood mist. A physical body with abnormal vitality. Strength beyond what an ordinary human should possess.

At that point, there was only one conclusion.

Splat!

The nearby onlookers were torn apart in an instant.

At the same time, golden ripples expanded across the air.

Countless Noble Phantasms pierced through the vampire’s body.

Its blood-red eyes bulged wide as its body began to dissolve into mist once more.

“Trying to run?”

A uniquely shaped golden dagger appeared in Ragnar’s hand.

He threw it straight toward the vampire just as it began to disperse.

“Arghhh!”

The vampire suddenly realized it could no longer transform into blood mist.

Instead, its body began to rot and collapse.

Gojo looked over.

“What was that, Ragnar?”

Ragnar retrieved the dagger and answered calmly.

“Rule Breaker.”

Noble Phantasm: Rule Breaker

Rank: C

Type: Anti-Cursed Energy Noble Phantasm

A Noble Phantasm once wielded by Medea, the witch of Greek mythology and princess of Colchis.

As a weapon, it possesses almost no conventional combat value. However, its true function lies in its ability to “break” all cursed energy connected to whatever is pierced by its blade.

It can sever the effect of cursed energy reinforcement, cursed techniques, contracts, and even lifeforms sustained or shaped through cursed energy.

In other words, anything born through cursed energy can be forcibly returned to the state before that cursed energy was ever applied.

For beings whose very existence depends on cursed energy, that is equivalent to immediate annihilation.

“It’s effective against things like vampire curse users,” Ragnar said. “If their bodies are being maintained through cursed energy, this is enough to collapse them.”

Even so, he hadn’t expected the survival ability of a vampire curse user to be this absurd.

Gojo had clearly been holding back the entire time, only using Blue at the lowest possible output.

But against something like this, partial destruction wasn’t enough.

He would need to wipe it out all at once.

Gojo glanced deeper into the slums.

“With curse users hanging around in a place like this, I’d say we found the right location.”

As Ragnar stepped over the vampire’s corpse, his expression shifted slightly.

…This feeling?

“Where did this bring me?”

At some point, he had already entered a curtain.

And the reason he knew that with certainty was simple.

A blood moon hung high overhead.

The entire world had been dyed red.

Gojo Satoru should have been beside him, but there was no sign of him now.

And around Ragnar stood the crumbling remains of ruined buildings, all of them so weathered they looked abandoned for years.

Which meant one thing.

This barrier scattered intruders at random.

“The curse users here are annoyingly cautious.”

Thump.

“…Hm?”

A filthy, rotting hand pushed its way up from the earth.

Ragnar looked around.

All across the area—stretching out for several kilometers in every direction—cursed spirits resembling ghouls were clawing their way out of the ground.

“…You’re trying to bury me in numbers?”

He almost felt embarrassed for them.

They had chosen the wrong opponent.

“Arghhhhh!!!”

The moment those howling ghouls fully burst from the earth, swords pierced through them one after another.

Standing at the center of that endless horde, Ragnar Kagenou activated the Gate of Babylon.

The radiance spilling from the golden ripples cut through even the blood-red moonlight above.

“Filthy vermin.”

His voice was low, cold, absolute.

“The dark, damp underground is the only place that suits you.”

The ghouls rushed at him in a stumbling tide.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The Gate of Babylon opened at full power.

After a full year of growth, Ragnar’s Gate of Babylon could now open five hundred gates at once.

Cursed Energy: 500/500

Golden Noble Phantasms rained outward, piercing through the bodies of countless ghoul-type cursed spirits and pinning them into the ground.

Ragnar stood where he was.

Not a single one of them could reach him.

Tens of thousands surged forward, yet all were reduced to corpses before they could come close.

Ragnar’s eyes swept across the battlefield.

“Now then… let me see where the nail is.”

Then he spotted it.

Far away in the distance, one particular ghoul-type cursed spirit had not approached him even once.

“It was you.”

The moment it realized Ragnar had noticed it, the ghoul immediately turned and fled deeper into the horde.

Ragnar gave a faint, contemptuous snort.

“A mindless creature like you still thinks it can hide?”

His eyes turned frigid.

“When you stand before this king, your exact location no longer matters.”

With a thought, he mobilized a hundred golden ripples at once and unleashed concentrated fire in that direction.